


When I Broke A Heart

by Foophile



Category: Prison Break
Genre: Gen, POV First Person, muse journal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-07-18
Updated: 2007-07-18
Packaged: 2017-10-22 12:54:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,232
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/238220
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Foophile/pseuds/Foophile
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first blow landed right on the bridge of the man's nose. He was a little taller than me, so I hooked the swing and put my whole body into it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	When I Broke A Heart

**Author's Note:**

> Prison Break and its related characters do not belong to me.

Posted over at [](http://versecollision.livejournal.com/profile)[**versecollision**](http://versecollision.livejournal.com/). Response to prompt #3.

Whiskey burned down my throat. It scorched, turning everything raw that wasn't already tender. I looked up from the sticky dark wood of the bar when another patron came through the door, bringing with him a draft of cold winter air and a piercing shaft of early afternoon light.

I should have been working but there was nothing to work at. I'd been fired that morning for tardiness, five in a row - a whole weeks worth of stuttering excuses that the foreman bought until today. I couldn't entirely blame him. Who else would believe a convicted felon had a seventeen year old brother to take care of? I wouldn't.

The bartender asked me if I wanted another shot and I nodded. I was blowing my last paycheck on booze I didn't even like. I hated whiskey. But as I watched the 'keep fill up that tiny glass with amber liquid I saw a few more moments of solitude bubble towards me. Some time to linger amongst all of my mistakes before I stumbled home to Michael.

It was fitting that school was just out. I'd heard the bell ring shrilly from across the street and wondered how many minutes it would take for Michael to put the pieces together. He was a smart boy, much smarter than his brother and I had no doubt that he would take one look at the clock on the wall, smell the alcohol on my breath, and know. He would know without my saying a word. And I never tried to explain it anymore.

I wouldn't need to tell him how I pleaded to the foreman that I would make it up to him with some unpaid work and I would never tell either of them the real reason for why I'd been late for the past week.

Michael didn't yell at me anymore when this kind of thing happened. But he used to.

+++

The first time I was arrested, I was seventeen. I'd been caught with my arms full of stolen car radios that I was planning to sell to a "friend" for that month's rent. It was a stupid rookie mistake; I hit the same lot twice and hadn't noticed that the owner installed security cameras that gave the police irrefutable proof.

When I told the cops I was a minor, it took an hour to make them believe it. I had no real ID after all - a minor could never rent a one room apartment and I was big for my age. What I lost in height, I made up for with wide shoulders and the beginning of a cultivated musculature that kept most thugs from looking twice. That year I'd started to shave my head to look older, harder, and although Michael hated it, the new stubble on my face gave me an image. I couldn't be the kid anymore, not if we were going to survive.

The second mistake of my arrest, other than getting caught, was calling home. The landlady was nice and frequently watched Michael after he came home from school. I suspected that she knew the real deal and the fact that she still kept her mouth shut told me that she was wise as well. We'd only been reported once, a few months after our mother died, and we spent a hellish month on the streets to stay below the radar. After that, I promised Michael and myself that no matter what, I would keep a roof over our heads.

I sat in a holding cell when the landlady came with Michael in tow. She was preoccupied, spinning some story about the two of us, but I could see Michael's puffy cheeks and red eyes through the bulletproof glass. He hadn't noticed me yet, had his head down and was holding onto the elderly woman's hand like it was a crutch. The last woman's hand he'd held was our mothers.

I don't know how the woman paid my bond but I was soon escorted out in the public waiting area and told that I would be called about my court date. The landlady pushed Michael in front of her the second she saw me and he ran into my arms, looking up at me as if everything was okay. As if there still wasn't a chance I would be put away for what I'd done.

The three of us were silent as we walked back to the apartment. I didn't know what to say to the woman. Thank you certainly wasn't enough. Michael went through bouts of holding my hand and letting it go. He would step away when there were people on the street and then nearly cling to me when there was hardly anyone around. He looked angry, then sad, then desperately confused in turns. I wondered how he didn't collapse in exhaustion by the time we made it home.

Michael went ahead while I got the reaming I expected from the landlady. She lectured me in with venom in her voice but by the time she was through she looked tired, as if she'd been through this before. I promised her that I would pay her back, I promised her any number of things as long as she didn't call Child Protection but I knew then that she already considered me a lost cause. It was Michael she was concerned about and the only reason he was still with me was because she wanted him happy.

Aching inside and out, the last thing I expected when I closed the apartment door was Michael standing in the middle of the living room.

"What did you think you were doing, Linc?"

I rolled my eyes and passed his still form before collapsing on the couch. I wasn't sure when Michael developed an authoritarian tone. No doubt he'd learned it from his teachers along with advanced geometry. But at times it reminded me of our father when he was angry and I liked the tone even less coming from my twelve year old brother.

"I was paying the rent, Mikey. How else did you think I was making money?"

"Why can't you work at McDonalds like every other teenager?"

I couldn't stop a chuckle at that, "Mike, I wouldn't make enough in a month at Mickey D's to keep us in this city. To keep you in clothes that fit you or buy groceries and pay all of those damn library fines you keep piling up."

"You're nothing but a common criminal!" Michael screeched. I bit my lip to keep from cursing at him but I was shouting in seconds.

"It's so easy to judge! I've been doing everything I could to keep us together, like mom wanted! To keep you in school and keep the grown ups off our back. You had no problem with me lying to your teachers or your friends parents, only when I get caught you grow a conscious. Well grow up Mikey!" I was off the couch, in his small red face, raging at him, the situation, myself.

Then Michael pointed at me, his body shaking in anger. "No you grow up Lincoln! This isn't some game! Mrs. Hammons almost called those people after you talked to her on the phone. If you really care then you'll find a real job like a normal person!"

"Goddamnit Michael, when are you going to get it through your little head that we're not normal people? Normal people don't lose their parents before they hit double digits! Normal people have family or friends that they can turn to for help instead of relying on luck and being stuck with their whiny fucking brother! Don't you get it Mikey? Nobody wants us!"

Tears were streaming down Michael's face by the time I caught my breath and I only had a second before he attacked me with fists flailing. Some of the strikes hurt and we nearly toppled to the ground as I tried to catch his wrists.

"Nobody wants you, you big stupid liar!" Michael screamed, "Nobody wants you because you steal and you’re stupid and mean! Plenty of people want me and all I have to do is tell Jimmy's parents and you'll be all alone and you can go to jail and never come out you dumb oaf!" He was hysterical in my arms and I let him go only when he collapsed on the carpet. I sat down heavily next to him tired and honestly hurt by what he'd said.

"Do you really want me to be all alone?"

Michael looked at me, rubbing his face into the rough fibers and what I saw in his eyes made my chest ache. He was so sad, sadder than I'd seen him in years, and then it was like he flipped an off switch. With swollen cheeks he sat up and crawled into my lap, we were face to face.

"I don't," He hiccupped. I wiped his runny nose with my jacket sleeve. "I don't want to be alone, Linc, and I will be if you go away."

"Then I won't go away," I said with confidence I didn't feel. I wanted to make him happy and turn him back into that little boy that didn't worry about solitude. It was my job to worry. "Have a little faith Mickey."

He gave me a look that would become very familiar over the next few years. His disbelief and wary trust kept us somewhat functional in between my trips to Juvie and then actual jail.

He never yelled at me after that night. Not even when Mrs. Hammons did hand him over to Child Protection a few weeks later and I broke into his foster home after almost six months apart to collect him. Instead Michael kept it all bottled up inside until it erupted at sixteen, when I woke up to find him staring blankly at a wall. He was diagnosed with low latent inhibition. He begged me never to tell anyone; Michael so wanted to be "normal".

I'd accepted long ago that neither of us would have the luxury of a white picket fence but I could never deny him the dream.

+++

Time became as fluid as the whiskey I poured down my throat. I couldn't feel the burn anymore; I couldn't feel much of anything that wasn't a low ache in my chest. Desolation was sour and heavy on my tongue, weighing down my head until it thumped against the bar. Through wailing guitars I heard another thump, this time next to my head, and I opened my mouth to say something to bartender - I hadn't quite planned it out - when Michael's frowning face leaned into my sight.

Michael was everything I was not. Rail thin, with long arms and legs that made me look like a stumpy troll. He was already my height and filling out everyday, replacing soft flesh with hard, baby fat with corded muscle. His hair was a halo of raven curls on his head, I hated it as much as he hated my baldness, but couldn't bring myself to ask him to cut it. He had our mother's eyes and mouth as much as he had her hair and I blinked back fuzzy vision to focus on two new bruises that stood out starkly on his pale skin.

I blurted out, "Who did that to you?"

"I don't think you're in a position to ask me questions, Lincoln." His tired sigh made me flinch as much as his use of my full name. "How long have you been here?"

I tried to sit up, using more energy than should have been necessary to straighten up and balance on a suddenly precarious bar stool. "I don't know," I cleared my throat and licked at dry lips, "An hour?"

Michael's quick eyes took in the line of shots in front of me. "Sure," He said suspiciously. "There was a message on the machine at home, your foreman. Said you forgot to clean out your locker."

My stomach dropped, "Shit, Mike-,"

"Michael," He corrected with a hard look. I wondered how I could have forgotten when he no longer looked anything like a child. "I talked to Mrs. Caprize at the library. She's looking for a porter and said I could start on Monday."

"No, Michael, I never wanted you to do that," My voice came out a rough whisper, I knew the situation was already out of my control.

Again, my brother looked at the liquor around us, the bar he was too young to stand in. He narrowed his eyes at something he saw to the side, "Obviously. Or else why would you be here?"

A punch to the gut would have hurt less. I turned wounded eyes to him and Michael looked away, sighing again as if he was itching to be somewhere else.

The bartender, a different person than before, ran his rough palm across the bar. "Man, if you're ready to split I got your tab ready."

"Yeah," I choked out, reaching in my pocket, "Yeah, we're leavin'."

He put the bill in front of me and I carefully counted out the amount, plus a few more for a tip. I could feel Michael watching me, his gaze as scorching as the liquor, more so only because I knew what he was thinking. I slapped the money down on the bill and handed the rest to Michael without looking at him, I knew he would keep it safe. Keep it away from me at least.

I knew my humiliation was complete when I stumbled trying to get my feet under me. Michael caught me quickly under an arm and draped it over his bony shoulder. My weight made us both sway and I steadied myself with a deadly grip on the hard stool and brief clutch at Michael's wool coat. He gave me a sideways glare when I took ill-timed comfort in touching his cold cheek, leaning my head against his on the other side.

"I'm sorry," I said for the hundredth, thousandth time.

"I know you are," Michael murmured in a grave, deep voice I'd never heard before.

I sucked in a deep breath and leaned away from him, gathering my loose threads and telling myself that I had to be the big brother again. I had to take care of Michael even if he seemed to be doing well enough without me.

I only needed the slightest support on my way out the door but was grateful that Michael was still by my side, as silent as he was. The bar door opened in front of us, a group of guys coming in, and the freezing Chicago wind whipped the air out of my lungs just as I heard one the guys sneer, "Faggots." Michael grunted when the same man shoved a shoulder into his chest as he passed and even though seconds ago I would have fallen over like a feather, I felt new strength returning to my limbs. The rest happened in a split second.

I turned in the doorway...

"What did you say?"

"Linc, no! Come back here!"

The man's breath stank like old beer and cigarettes, right in my face...

"You heard what I said, you fucken pussy."

"How 'bout you say it to my face."

"How 'bout I say it when you're suckin' my-,"

I felt Michael's cold fingers slipping across the back of my neck...

"NO!"

The first blow landed right on the bridge of the man's nose. He was a little taller than me, so I hooked the swing and put my whole body into it. I hardly felt the answering jar in my shoulder. I hardly felt anything but burning rage. It encompassed me, kept my feet light enough to duck and weave, kept me focused on the blood on the man's ugly angry face.

He charged, shoving us through the glass door of the bar and onto the sidewalk. I landed on painful shards of glass digging into my scalp, into my cheek when the man punched my head to the side. When my ears stopped ringing I could hear Michael not too far away, he called out my name and then shouted in pain, and I knew that the thug's buddies were holding him back. My rage only increased.

In a flash, I'd reversed our positions and proceeded to pummel the man into the ground. I felt the man struggle to cover his face underneath me, my knuckles rubbed raw and covered in our blood. When he went still, moaning in pain, I got up and for a second his mangled face looked like my boss's and then my father's. I shook my aching head to clear it.

Then I turned to the men holding back my brother. The three guys stood wide eyed against the bar's brick wall, one man keeping Michael still with a forearm against his neck. A corner of Michael's bottom lip was bloody. I flexed my fists.

Michael moved so fast he had all of us blinking in surprise as he suddenly held me back with long fingers on my chest. The men, who now stood there with no purpose, turned their collective heads towards the sound of sirens and ran away.

I panted in the cold air, adrenaline still rushing through my veins and keeping the pain away. Our shoes crunched in the puddle of glass as Michael followed my frantic movements on the pavement, pulling me towards him when I stepped over to the asshole on the ground and away when I tried to touch Michael's bruised face with a bloodied hand.

"Jesus, Linc, why?" Michael's voice cracked on the last word and I stopped my pacing, remembering the last time I'd seen Michael cry, forever and only four years ago. When he was still Mikey.

Michael had tried to wipe the blood on his lip away and instead smeared a crimson stain down the slope of his chin. In the stark cold of the dark - I blinked in wonder, where had the sun gone? - Michael's bruises stood out in stark relief. The ones from last week, on his forehead and over his eyebrow, were a sickly yellow soon to fade into nothingness. While the new ones, that Michael still hadn't answered for, where a sooty purple and black.

I felt another surge of anger heat my body when I looked at those. I'd been watching Michael so carefully this week, waiting for him to leave for school and following him the whole way, seeking out the little punks. All for nothing.

Michael's expressive eyes were filled with sadness and tears yet to fall and he asked me again, "Why couldn't you just leave it alone?" And for once I wanted to tell him, tell him everything. Scream it so loud that everyone would have to hear it. Then they would understand and I could keep Michael safe and with me and in a home he deserved and a real childhood instead of this constant limbo with adulthood that confused him so much.

The cops were skidding to a halt in the street beside us and Michael still looked as if he really wanted an answer, but instead of explaining all of it as twisted and convoluted as it was I simply muttered, "I'm sorry" and watched my brother's heart break for the second time.

I hadn't known what his puzzled hurt was four years ago but it must have mirrored my look when our mother told me that she was going to die and that there was nothing I could do to stop it. It probably cut as deeply as the landlady's disgusted glare through prison bars, asking me "how could you do this? Don't you know what have done?" It probably squeezed at Michael's heart like that second of hesitation when I came to get him from the foster home.

At seventeen, my heart had nearly stopped at the thought of Michael losing trust in me and now a seventeen year old Michael knew that he couldn't.

The bartender and a waitress had come outside to talk to the cops and I was quickly handcuffed and pushed into a cold squad car. I nearly shouted when a cop headed in Michael's direction but the waitress, a short brunette with kind eyes and a nametag that said Lisa, walked Michael into the bar. When she came out again, a few minutes later, she was alone. I breathed a sigh of relief.

My thoughts were clear again, I'd burned through the alcohol like fuel and I sat in the backseat making a list of what to do. Call Veronica and ask her to look in on Michael, try to get the same court appointed attorney I'd had the last time - his name was Roy and he seemed to give a shit about idiots like myself. Most importantly try to reduce my sentence down to probation and maybe a year of mandatory AA, anything to avoid some hard time.

If I couldn't get my sentence reduced, I sighed, well word was sure to get to the old man who hooked me up with the construction job. He knew how to work the system and I was already in his pocket for a loan I needed when Michael registered for his SAT last month. He would pay my bail and I would be a gopher for his bidding but that was alright - that kind of work I could do. It was time to ask for another loan anyway, this one much larger than any of the others. Michael needed to get away from here, anyway from me, and college was the perfect opportunity to do that. No doubt he would run to the best school, maybe Loyola nearby, when he figured out that things were only going to get worse with me.

An ambulance showed up for the jerk on the ground. He was already sitting up; face bloody and railing about pressing charges, his leather jacket was ripped from the glass he broke. That little waitress was pointing at him and the glass. Maybe the cops would get the story straight for once.

A rookie cop leaned into the front seat with the man's driver’s license in his hand, punching up his information right in front of me. The asshole had a record. My luck was changing for the better.

The cop didn't look at me when he started to talk, “Look man, you wanna press charges? Those witnesses say that the guy started it by running his mouth, pushed you or somethin'. You're both already drunk, 'tender says you've been in there all afternoon and the other guy stinks of booze, the paramedics will run a breathalyzer. So, with the front door and some doctor's bills, the both of you are equally screwed."

"I won't press charges if he doesn't."

The cop looked at me then and got out of the car, "Alright then. Keep this painless." As he walked away, I saw a shadow behind him then Michael leaned nonchalantly against the other side of the car. I jumped.

"Jesus, Michael what are you doing here? Go back to the apartment!"

"It seems like you're getting lucky on this one Linc," Michael crouched by the closed window so I cold hear him, but all I could think about was the rookie coming over to the driver's side and seeing my little brother kneeling there. The less Michael was exposed to the law the better.

"For some reason," Michael continued as if he had all the time in the world, "They seem to like you here. The waitress pushed me out the back door, told the cops you were protecting yourself. She's pretty, didn't mention me at all."

I knew that this was Michael's payback, “You need to stay out of this. Go back to the apartment now, don't let anyone see you."

I'd plead to the back of his head this whole time but finally he turned, his shoes scuffing against the pavement. His eyes were red rimmed but clear and determined. They scared me for a second.

"This is the first time I've ever hated you Lincoln. I wanted you to know that," Then Michael walked away, going back to the apartment like I asked him to.

I knew that Michael probably didn't mean it but a part of me hoped that he did. It was his payback, what I deserved really. If he hated me it would be easier for him to forget me when he went to away to school. It would be easier for Michael to excel and be certain that he didn't want to be anything like me.

And I would get the money that he needed and tell him that I wasn't from me - I'd think something up. I'd do what I had to do and leave him alone, but try to be there if he ever needed me. If he was lucky he never would.

In the back of the cold cop car, I decided that breaking Michael's heart was for the best and the sharp pain in my own chest was inconsequential.

If the rookie cop noticed the wetness on my face when he returned he didn't say anything.


End file.
